Child mental health crisis: Better resilience is the solution, say experts

[_Russ_]

Experts catch up with the bleeding obvious (again)

Mental health: Children should be more resilient, say experts

The surge in mental health referrals among young people has prompted debate among experts about the cause - and the most effective solution

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[cupid_stunt]

This should be interesting...

 

[Smokeandsteam]

As Mark Fisher once said ‘Considering mental illness an individual chemico-biological problem has enormous benefits for capitalism. First, it reinforces Capital's drive towards atomistic individualization (you are sick because of your brain chemistry).

Second, it provides an enormously lucrative market in which multinational pharmaceutical companies can peddle their pharmaceuticals.

It goes without saying that all mental illnesses are neurologically instantiated, but this says nothing about their causation. If it is true, for instance, that depression is constituted by low serotonin levels, what still needs to be explained is why particular individuals have low levels of serotonin. This requires a social and political explanation; and the task of politicizing mental illness is an urgent one’.

In that context developing effective resilience is an essential tool in fighting back, in being strong enough to exist and operate and in resisting capitalism’s desire to medicalise issues - like poverty, bullshit jobs, empty consumption and consumerism, the smashing up of social solidarity, anomic social relations, etc - that are better understood as responses to political phenomena. However, for some, this is easier said than done.

 

[brogdale]

Experts catch up with the bleeding obvious (again)

Mental health: Children should be more resilient, say experts

The surge in mental health referrals among young people has prompted debate among experts about the cause - and the most effective solution

www.bbc.co.uk

Suggest that you read the article that you linked to.

 

[Ax^]

As Mark Fisher once said

Check out the big brain On Brad :

 

[brogdale]

In that context developing effective resilience is an essential tool in fighting back, in being strong enough to exist and operate and in resisting capitalism’s desire to medicalise issues - like poverty, bullshit jobs, empty consumption and consumerism, the smashing up of social solidarity, anomic social relations, etc - that are better understood as responses to political phenomena. However, for some, this is easier said than done.

Exactly; and we have to remember that straight-forward promotion of "resilience" is an established position by which the neoliberal state simultaneously seeks to obscure the role of neoliberalism in worsening MH and evading any cost/responsibility for the curative treatments made necessary.

 

[Pickman's model]

i thought this would be a perhaps useful thread about resilience and emergency planning, covering things like the local and london resilience forums. but then i saw who posted it and i knew it would be a crock of shite

 

[Yossarian]

I thought this would be a thread about a new leftwing party

 

[tommers]

I thought it was going to be about some Victorian era ice breaking ship or something.

Newly discovered wreck off Gaffins Bay,showing fascinating insights into how explorers of the time lived.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Once again the OP is guilty of ignoring a common sense rule.

Thread titles should be concise and meaningful. Vague titles (e.g., 'look at this!') just waste time and bandwidth.

Terms and rules

You must agree to these terms and rules before using the site.

www.urban75.net

But, it could still be an interesting conversation, it's clearly a complex issue, and certainly not one that can just be brush off with 'kids need more resilience.'

 

[tommers]

It's a bit of a tautology isn't it?

Kids need more ability to deal with mental health issues so that they can deal with mental health issues.

Tbf the nurse sounds proper Brexit means Brexit. The Dr who pointed out that kids still need to meet clinical thresholds in order to get treatment is correct and we should be asking "why are so many meeting those thresholds"? Rather than "why can't they just deal with it?".

The world news has been pretty much unrelentingly dismal for years. My kids often say they're worried about the climate crisis etc. Lots of adults are struggling too. By all means teach kids coping mechanisms but there also needs to be some understanding of how society is causing this in the first place.

 

[Dystopiary]

Nick Triggle's the BBC guy who kept spouting shit about Covid.

 

[existentialist]

Experts catch up with the bleeding obvious (again)

Mental health: Children should be more resilient, say experts

The surge in mental health referrals among young people has prompted debate among experts about the cause - and the most effective solution

www.bbc.co.uk

That article's just a load of fluff, which just regurgitates a few talking points. Over 10 years ago, I was working in schools, and it was accepted as fact, at least amongst my fellow mental health professionals, that a) the education system was toxic and unnecessarily stressful ("but they're learning lessons which will help them in the workplace"...uh, nope), b) the best thing we could do was help young people develop resilience to cope with the undue levels of stress and anxiety that were being provoked in them.

All this article is essentially saying is that the issue is being recognised beyond mental health professionals. But there's a long road between that recognition and anyone actually doing anything practical about it, like taking a long hard look at our education system and why it causes so much harm to so many people, far less actually putting realistic funding into the service.

I don't work in that sector any more. Why? Because they cheesepared the funding time and again to the point where it was no longer possible to do any meaningful work in schools. And that was over 10 years ago. Colour me cynical, but I see nothing to indicate that the situation is any different now. The best we will see is some minimally funded stuff around "resilience building", no change in the toxic environments we shove our kids into, and lots of fingerpointing if the resilience stuff doesn't actually work - "well, it must be YOUR fault, then, anxious schoolchild".

I've seen too much of this bullshit over the years to have any faith in the idea that anything will ever get done about it.

And the irony is, if you were to do it on a cost/benefit basis, then provided you were prepared to amortise the benefits over a lifetime (or, frankly, 20 years would do), it would be an investment that paid off in spades.

But that won't happen. They'll be all over it right up until someone does the costings.

 

[RevolutionSound]

Experts catch up with the bleeding obvious (again)

Mental health: Children should be more resilient, say experts

The surge in mental health referrals among young people has prompted debate among experts about the cause - and the most effective solution

www.bbc.co.uk

What should be being talked about is the education system and the Gove reforms. That's the main problem.

 

[furluxor]

I said this around 7 years ago, when we got "wellbeing stuff" (a phoneline etc) at work: "now they're all excited about mental health, but just wait until they realise what pandora's box they've opened".

Whilst I only read 1/3 of the article (sorry), this resilience talk sounds to me like an attempt to put the lid back on the box. Now that mental health is a real thing, institutions have to do something about it, and there's nothing to be done unless you dismantle the whole capitalist system. But if you come up with a fake solution and some jargon around it, maybe it's the individual's fault and mental health is not a real thing after all.

I don't think it's gonna work, the cat is out of the bag.

 

[BristolEcho]

I said this around 7 years ago, when we got "wellbeing stuff" (a phoneline etc) at work: "now they're all excited about mental health, but just wait until they realise what pandora's box they've opened".

Whilst I only read 1/3 of the article (sorry), this resilience talk sounds to me like an attempt to put the lid back on the box. Now that mental health is a real thing, institutions have to do something about it, and there's nothing to be done unless you dismantle the whole capitalist system. But if you come up with a fake solution and some jargon around it, maybe it's the individual's fault and mental health is not a real thing after all.

I don't think it's gonna work, the cat is out of the bag.

I stopped reading when I got to the part that was talking about the COO of Meta. Like who gives a fuck.

 

[existentialist]

TBF, I do think that some kind of emotional resilience work could be a very useful addition to people's education. But I've been around that particular block far too often (both in schools and workplaces, specifically NHS) to have any faith in the idea that it will become anything more than an exercise in blame-shifting. Anything to avoid looking at what might be wrong with "the system", rather than just finding a way of saying "it's your problem now, and it's on you to fix it". No mental health intervention is a magic bullet, and anyone touting ANYTHING as a "simple solution" to what are, inevitably, complex issues, is deluding themselves, and anyone who listens to them.

 

[ddraig]

Experts catch up with the bleeding obvious (again)

Mental health: Children should be more resilient, say experts

The surge in mental health referrals among young people has prompted debate among experts about the cause - and the most effective solution

www.bbc.co.uk

Not a very meaningful thread title now is it Wuss!

 

[_Russ_]

I knew resilience would be a dirty word in here, it's far too close to personal responsibility
Ddraig, I laugh every time I read your tag, Rik would probably just call you a Wanker

 

[existentialist]

I knew resilience would be a dirty word in here, it's far too close to personal responsibility
Ddraig, I laugh every time I read your tag, Rik would probably just call you a Wanker

Sounds like you could do with some resilience training.

 

[brogdale]

I knew resilience would be a dirty word in here, it's far too close to personal responsibility

Almost as though you have never reflected on the fact that no working people are personally responsible for the accelerating neoliberal capitalist relations we live under.

 

[lazythursday]

Don't really get this, given that a lot of mental health treatment - CBT - is all about changing thought patterns and building resilience anyway.

You could also make a case that SSRIs make you more resilient to shitty lives.

So what's different about an approach that focuses on personal resilience?

 

[ddraig]

I knew resilience would be a dirty word in here, it's far too close to personal responsibility
Ddraig, I laugh every time I read your tag, Rik would probably just call you a Wanker

Why's that then glorious thread starter?
You don't even take "personal responsibility" for your own posts

 

[editor]

Title changed to something meaningful.

 

[Red Cat]

Actually the psychiatrist who is reported to have said this was on radio 4 news last night and he talked about systemic and community resilience too, it wasn't purely individual.

And he didn't say children need to be more resilient, he was eloquent and nuanced.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Actually the psychiatrist who is reported to have said this was on radio 4 news last night and he talked about systemic and community resilience too, it wasn't purely individual.

And he didn't say children need to be more resilient, he was eloquent and nuanced.

I heard that and thought he explicitly rejected the notion of individual resilience as the way forward. He seemed very clear that resilience needed to be social and systemic. Doesn't make for such good headlines though.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice